The devil inside, p.19
The Devil Inside, page 19
“I just need company, or else I might need to take myself to the hospital. I called the emergency number on the card my doctor gave me, but I hung up on the woman who answered. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk to her.”
I sat forward, frowning. “Talk to her about what? What’s going on?”
“Everything is spiraling, Oak. I can’t get a grip. I’m losing it. I’ve got a huge fucking bottle of gin in front of me, but if I open it, I don’t think I’ll wake up tomorrow. I need a distraction. Please.” The emotion was thick in his voice and stabbed right into the center of my chest.
“Are you at home?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m on my way. And don’t be a fucking idiot, or I’ll kick your ass.”
Amanda glanced over the back of the couch when I barrelled into the house. I dumped my beer in the sink and searched for my keys, finding them under the pile of mail I’d brought up the day before.
“I gotta go. I’m sorry. I don’t have time to explain. I won’t be home tonight.”
I tugged my shoes on and was about to pull the door open when Amanda stopped me. She removed my keys from my hand. “Uber.”
“Fuck. I’ve hardly had anything to drink.”
“Oak, you’ve been drinking beer since ten o’clock this morning, and God knows how many pills you’ve taken. You aren’t driving.”
I surveyed the room, trying to see if my world was off-kilter. Nothing swayed or moved funny. In fact, for the first time in a few hours, I felt better. “Mandy. I’m good. Give me my keys.”
“Oak, listen to me.” She touched my face and drew my focus down. “Your eyes are glassy, and you’ve got that look about you. You think I don’t see you self-medicating all the time? You think I don’t know about your stashes of pills all over the house? You think you’re fine, but you’re not. You’re walking around like a zombie. Like you’re in the clouds and your feet don’t touch the ground. Just get an Uber so I have peace of mind. If the cops pull you over, they’ll lock you up.”
“Okay.” Was I that bad?
“Where are you going?”
Guilt swamped me.
She saw it on my face and pressed her lips together, a crease forming in her brow. “You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”
“It’s not what you think. He sounds like he’s in a bad place. I just … I know those thoughts. I know those feelings. I have to go. He’s in trouble.”
Amanda went up on her toes and kissed my cheek. “Go. Take care of yourself. Don’t be stupid.”
I pounded on Jameson’s door forty minutes later. It had taken me far longer than I would have liked to get an Uber, and traffic was heavy.
A muffled “It’s open” came from within.
Bracing for an unstable Jameson, I headed inside. A thick curtain of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The apartment was stark and dreary. No lights were on, and the setting sun had left the apartment steeped in murky shadows.
Jameson sat against a wall in nothing more than a pair of boxers, a forty of gin between his sprawled legs, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and an overfull ashtray beside him. He toyed with something in his hand, but it was obscured and the lighting was too poor to make out what it was.
His head was tipped back against the wall, eyes closed.
There was a large rectangular bare spot on his rug that stood out as cleaner than the rest of the carpet. I scanned and frowned. Something was different.
“Where the fuck is your couch?”
“Threw it out. I don’t want no STDs.”
“The hooker?”
“Yeah. Don’t need it. I can sit on the floor just fine. What took you so long?”
“Had to get a ride.”
Jameson opened one eye and tilted his head to the side, assessing me. “Why?”
“Because you aren’t the only one with problems. You opened the bottle.” I gestured at the gin in his lap.
“Yup.” As though remembering it was sitting between his legs, he unscrewed the lid and helped himself to a long pull. It sloshed down his chin, and he wiped it away with a hand, uncaring. “Good stuff.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “There’s one for you. A peace offering. Plus, I smashed your last bottle. Grab it. Sit with me.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets as I crossed toward Jameson, ignoring his invitation to join him in a drink. The draw for alcohol was there, a constant thrum under my skin. In fact, this whole situation almost required it, but Amanda’s words were fresh in my mind.
Jameson stubbed out his smoke as I slid down the wall beside him. The blinds were pulled aside on his balcony window, and there was enough light shining in to give me a better sense of the man beside me. A thick sterile bandage covered his upper thigh. It was spotted dark in places—blood seeping through, if I had to guess.
I frowned, and that was when the silver scars on his opposite thigh caught my eye. There were dozens of them, all in neat little rows, some thicker and longer than others.
He twirled the item in his hand, and I saw it for what it was. A scalpel.
He caught me watching.
“You’ve got pills. I’ve got this. We’re a great duo, aren’t we?”
Bothered by what I was seeing, I glanced around, spotting a lamp on the table that had once sat beside his couch. I went and turned it on before sitting again, frowning at the mess on his upper thigh.
“Are you shocked, Corbitt?”
Not really, but I stayed quiet, sensing he wasn’t finished talking. I thought it best to hear him out. This was serious stuff.
“I stopped cutting for a while. They locked me up in the crazy house last year for five days, and I didn’t like that.” He flipped his wrists up and showed me the multiple long scars on the underside. I hadn’t noticed them before, but Jameson always wore a coat or a long-sleeved shirt. “Every time, I get a little closer to making it happen. But you know what?”
He rocked his head to the side, blinking heavily-lidded eyes in my direction.
“What?”
“The shit inside never stops. No matter how deep I go or how much I bleed, it’s always there. I don’t think it’s ever going away.”
“It’s not.” It was a hard truth I’d only just learned, and maybe it wasn’t wise to be so blunt with him, but he needed to hear it.
He nodded, eyes glassy with tears or too much alcohol, I couldn’t tell. “Didn’t think so.”
“It’s not as bad as you think.”
“Speak for yourself. I think I’d rather be dead.”
I carefully removed the scalpel from his hand and set it out of reach. He didn’t argue. Instead, he occupied himself with another smoke, fumbling it from the pack, hands trembling. I let him have a minute and lit my own.
“You didn’t feel this way when we were kids.”
“I didn’t know any better.”
“Exactly. Everything that makes this feel wrong came from people who poisoned you with their false information. People spoon-fed you lies and beat it into your head. They abused us. They fucked us up.”
“It’s not false information.”
“It is. Think about it for five fucking seconds. You know I’m right. I was there too. They did that same shit to me, and I walked away believing the same things. That I was tainted. That I was evil. That I was sick. It destroyed me for fifteen fucking years. I did everything to be someone I’m not. I fucking married a woman and spent years agonizing over being intimate with her, forcing something that wasn’t natural to me.”
He huffed. “Yeah, and then you had some epiphany, and it all got better.”
“No. There was no epiphany, and how the fuck am I better? My life is in the shitter. I have depression, suicidal thoughts every day, and addictions coming out my ass. That’s not better. What I do have is a clearer picture of who I am. I’m learning to accept myself instead of hating myself. I’m cutting out all that bullshit they fed us and replacing it with the truth. I’m not sick. I’m gay. It’s been a hard pill to swallow. If you think this whole thing has been easy on me, you’re dead fucking wrong.”
“I’m not you. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can.”
Jameson stared into the distance, unseeing. His smoke remained untouched between his fingers, the ash growing long on the end. I removed it from his hand before it fell and put it in the ashtray.
He didn’t move. The longer we sat, the further away he drifted. I feared for the man beside me.
The bandage on his thigh was more stained than when I arrived. I shuffled to my knees, and Jameson blinked out of his funk.
“What are you doing?” he asked when I reached to undo the bandage.
“I wanna see how bad it is.”
He didn’t fight me off as I undid the knot.
“It’s just fresh, it’s not bad.”
I didn’t believe him. Once exposed, I sucked in a breath as my stomach dropped. “That’s your idea of not bad? You carved up your fucking leg.”
He stared at the still seeping cuts and shrugged. “It’s been worse.”
“Did you at least clean it?”
He shrugged again.
“Do you have more of this gauze?”
“Bathroom.”
I rose to go find some but turned back to grab the blade, not inclined to leave it within reach while I wasn’t looking.
Jameson chuckled. It was a sad, wilting sound. “That’s why I called you, asshole. I don’t cut when people are watching. Only when I’m alone.”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
The first aid kit was open on the counter in the bathroom, its contents spread everywhere. I grabbed the roll of gauze and a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol along with ointment and sterile strips of tape. At least he owned these things.
In the living room, I kneeled in front of him and examined the cuts.
“You don’t need to fuss over me. I’m fine.”
“You cut gouges into your leg. You’re not fine. Shut up and sit still. I’m not a fucking nurse, so this will probably hurt like a bitch.”
“Good. I hope so.”
He closed his eyes and braced his hands on the floor as I poured alcohol over the fresh wounds, catching the run-off with the old gauze.
He sucked air between his teeth and winced. It must have stung like hell. I dabbed it dry. One of the worse cuts dribbled a continuous stream of blood down his thigh. I caught it before it landed on the ground and added pressure.
“You need stitches, for fuck’s sake.”
“Nah. Use the butterfly bandages to hold it closed. They work the same.”
“You’d know. Which ones are the butterfly bandages?”
He scanned the stuff I’d brought and shook his head. “In a little box. They’re long and thin. They pull the skin together and close the wound.”
“Hold this. Put pressure.”
“Let it fucking bleed.”
“No.” I grabbed his hand and made him hold the gauze in place. It earned me a scowl.
I found the bandages he was talking about and used far too many to close the worst of his cuts. Jameson found me amusing.
“Careful, Oak, I’m gonna think you give a shit about me if you keep it up.”
“I do give a shit about you.”
He stopped talking, frowning as he watched me rewrap his leg. I tied it tight, hoping it would staunch the bleeding, then stared at my sloppy work.
“Thinking of a career change?” he asked, running a finger under the new wrap, testing it.
“Nah. I don’t have the compassion to be a nurse.”
“Access to drugs. That’s a plus.”
“That’s all I need, more fucking drugs.”
Deciding I’d fussed enough, I scanned the apartment and relented, searching the kitchen for that promised drink before joining him on the floor again.
“You got the one I like, at least.” I admired the bottle of Jameson and smiled.
“It’s got my name on it. That’s the one you said you like.”
I cracked the lid and took a small drink. “I was gonna ask if I could crash on your couch tonight, but I see that’s not a possibility now.”
“You aren’t going home?”
“Sounded like you needed me here.”
He said nothing, sipping his gin.
“Does the wife know where you are?”
“She does.”
I felt his gaze on me, but I continued to stare at the bottle in my hand, tracing his name with a finger.
“What all does she know? ’Bout me?”
“Everything.”
He shifted, readjusting. “Look. About that night—”
“Forget it.”
“I was in a bad place, and I shouldn’t have dragged you into it. What happened, it—”
“I said forget it. What’s done is done.”
“Right. It won’t happen again.”
The swell of silence that followed his statement disagreed. We both felt the weight of the lie. We both felt the pull that hadn’t faded in fifteen years.
We drank, smoked, and didn’t talk. It gave me too much time to think. My thoughts bounced from Amanda and the concerns she’d raised when I’d left the house, to my doctor and all the new information I’d spent the past few weeks absorbing when it came to what had happened to me as a teenager.
Some days, it felt like I’d woken up in a deep, dark hole in the ground, and I needed to figure out how to get out. As we sat side by side, I realized Jameson was in that hole with me. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. We weren’t a good match to get out of this together. We were both too damaged, too broken to rely on one another for help, yet, he was my only companion in the dark.
I wouldn’t leave him behind.
SIXTEEN
Jameson
The worst of it passed with Oakland’s presence. The heavy weight on my chest grew lighter. My racing, out of control thoughts calmed, and the danger subsided. As the night deepened and the gin soaked into my veins, Oakland’s proximity and concern for my wellbeing birthed new problems.
Problems I wasn’t ready to deal with.
I knew even before I sent that first text that I was playing with fire. My sole concern at the time had been the cliff’s edge that loomed in front of me and the strong pull to step off and be done with life. Fear of that blade in my hand and the bottle of gin that would make it all possible had made me pick up the phone. Fear that I might be brave enough this time had made me seek Oakland.
But the fear of what could happen if he showed up hadn’t been enough to stop me.
He’d lived in a corner of my mind since we were teenagers. No matter how many walls of denial I erected, Oakland was always there in the background.
This thrumming need, this yearning sense of desire that budded and bloomed and grew inside me in his presence also filled me with dread. I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to act on it, but the pull was too much for me to fight. It had always been more than I could handle.
It had been almost an hour since either of us had spoken. The gin no longer burned going down, and my last cigarette was ash in the tray. Oakland had hardly touched his whiskey. He sipped it here and there, but I caught him popping pills when I returned from a trip to the bathroom. There was a glazed look in his eyes I was familiar with.
“Why are you staring at me?”
I blinked, turned my head, and ran my fingers over the bandage on my thigh. “I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were. And you have been for the last fifteen minutes.”
I recapped the gin and put it aside. My heart hammered as I fought off the wild ideas swarming my brain. I pressed against the cuts, digging my fingers in until it hurt enough I sucked in a breath.
Oakland swatted my hand. “What the hell are you doing? You’re gonna make it bleed again.”
He fussed, touching the bandage, readjusting it as a spot of blood appeared through the fabric. He lifted his molasses eyes to mine, frowning. “What’s your problem? Why do you keep doing that?”
My problem was Oakland. My problem was the insatiable craving prickling my skin.
But those thoughts deserved punishment. They went together in my head, and I couldn’t tear them apart.
Oakland studied my face. He was close, leaning over me and waiting for an answer.
I took his hand and rested it over the bandage. The heat from his body leached through to my skin. His gaze flashed from my face to my leg. Gently, he skimmed his fingers over the surface, a dip in his brow.
“Oak?” My voice rasped.
“Yeah?” He focused on my face again.
A war broke out inside me. Right versus wrong. Good versus evil. Want and desire versus shame and guilt.
“Kiss me.”
His gaze fell to my mouth, the crease between his brows deepening. As he moved forward, I brought my hand over his, and when his lips pressed against mine, I pressed his fingers into my thigh—into my cuts.
Pleasure and punishment. Desire and pain.
My grunt was mistaken for enjoyment, and Oakland moved closer. My head hit the wall as he invaded my mouth, tongue lashing out and seeking mine. His heady taste—whiskey and cigarettes—tingled my taste buds and shivered over my body. It was too good, and a flood of hatred rose to wash away the good feelings.
Forgetting I was injured, Oakland used my leg for leverage to bring himself closer, adjusting our angle and deepening the kiss.
I whimpered, my body growing taut. Hot, satisfying waves of pain shot up my leg. But I wasn’t willing to let it end.
He nipped my lip playfully—not hard enough. Everything about the way he was acting was too gentle, tipping the balance, fucking with the equilibrium I was trying to create.
I pressed harder against his hand, and my leg jerked reflexively. I gasped, and Oakland’s mouth disappeared.
“What’s—”
He glanced down where I held his wrist prisoner against my thigh. Realization smacked him in the face, and he tore his hand free.
The bandage was soaked with blood and horror flashed in his eyes. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ignoring his shock, I fisted his shirt, hauling him closer again. He resisted, but not enough. Foreheads together, I fought with panic, crushing desire, and infuriation.
